Çatalhöyük was an egalitarian society that maintained a fundamental respect for life and labor.

Cover photo: Deer hunt, detail of a wall painting from level III, Çatalhöyük, Turkey (circa 5750 BCE). Via the University of Buffalo.

The Art of Labor

At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, American workers — including children — suffered twelve hour work days and seven day work weeks. Labor Day originated in 1882 as an annual mass rally in New York organized by socialists and leftist organizations to demand shorter hours, higher pay, safer working conditions, and a labor holiday. President Grover Cleveland would declare Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894.

COVID-19 has revealed who are the essential workers and who performs the unnecessary “bullshit jobs”. This once-in-a-century pandemic has also demonstrated the global interdependency of resources, labor, and supply chains — what we commonly refer to as globalization.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and likely their healthcare. This has inspired me to create a new series on the art of labor through the centuries, with a focus on how work has been valued and represented.

This is the first work of a twenty part series.

Neolithic Era

At the western edge of the Fertile Crescent — in present-day Turkey — lies the neolithic village of Çatalhöyük, one of the earliest known settlements in human history. Çatalhöyük was first settled in 7400 BCE and continuously occupied for approximately 1200 years. Çatalhöyük was discovered just last century by British archaeologist James Mellaart and the territory was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012.

Division of Labor

A key distinguishing feature of civilization includes the complex division of labor. Çatalhöyük was an agrarian society that domesticated animals such as sheep, cattle, goats, horses, dogs, boar, fox, hare and deer. This domestication allowed for the specialization of labor, leading to the rise of such professions as weaving, metalworking, and pottery.

The lack of division between buildings suggests Çatalhöyük was an egalitarian society. Despite this egalitarianism, and the documented existence of a variety of work, the majority of art was dedicated to animals and hunting. “We look at what we call their art. Why where they so interested in bulls?” wonders Çatalhöyük field director, Shahina Farid from University College London.

Deer Hunt

Çatalhöyük’s Deer hunt (also known as Stag hunt) wall painting depicts the ritualistic scene of an organized hunting party. The action is ambiguous but it appears some of the men are holding throwing sticks and possibly a bow. The painting is one of the earliest preserved representations of man performing labor.

While the Deer hunt mural may appear crude, the painting was carefully prepared. According to Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Volume I, “The Çatal Höyük painters used brushes to apply their pigments to a background of dry white plaster. The careful preparation of the wall surface is in striking contrast to the direct application of pigment to the irregularly shaped walls and ceilings of Old Stone Age caves.”

Color

The artists of Çatalhöyük used pigments such as ochre, cinnabar, malachite and azurite for murals as well as funerary body painting. In their seminal 1969 book, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay observed that cultures across the world consistently created names for colors in a predictable order.

Except for white and black, red was the first color recognized by languages spanning the globe. Anthropologists speculate this is the case because of the universal importance of blood. The color of red ochre was likely meant to be symbolic of “life” itself.

Work and Dignity

The art of Çatalhöyük embraced the connection of life and labor. Deer hunt captures the vital work of hunting, and the life sustaining nourishment offered by the wild and domesticated animals of Çatalhöyük. The wall paintings of the egalitarian settlement display a reverence for all life and the dignity of work that would then disappear for hundreds of centuries.